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Where We Must Vaccinate

Globally, more than 11 children under the age of five die every minute, many of them in South Asia, from preventable diseases. While the world has the tools to ensure that no child dies unnecessarily from an illness that vaccination could have prevented, using them successfully requires overcoming several obstacles.

KARACHI/GANDHIDHAM-GUJARAT – With measles outbreaks currently spreading across Europe and the Midwestern United States, and meningitis infecting US college students, health experts are doing something they never thought they’d have to do in early 2017: reminding people in developed countries that vaccines save lives.

Perhaps vaccines are a victim of their own success: they work so well in protecting people against certain illnesses that many in the West have forgotten how devastating preventable diseases can be. With the recent outbreaks in the US and Europe, parents are being reminded that foregoing vaccinations for their children is a deadly gambit.

Sadly, in many other parts of the world, particularly South Asia, parents need no reminding that immunization saves lives. What they need is access to vaccines.

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Zulfiqar A. Bhutta is Founding Director of Aga Khan University’s Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health, Co-Director of SickKids Centre for Global Child Health, and President of the International Pediatric Association.

Such complete nonsense about measles. Last time I checked measles killed zero people in the US in the last 10 years. MMR vaccine killed roughly 200 people. These are cdc figures. Vaccinate your own kids, lets the rest of us choose for ourselves.